The WiTricity story begins late one night with MIT Professor Marin Soljačić (pronounced Soul-ya-cheech) standing in his pajamas, staring at his mobile phone on the kitchen counter. It was the sixth time that month that he was awakened by his phone beeping to let him know that he had forgotten to charge it. At that moment, it occurred to him: “There is electricity wired all through this house, all through my office—everywhere. This phone should take care of its own charging!” But to make this possible, one would have to find a way to transfer power from the existing wired infrastructure to the phone—without wires. Soljačić started thinking of physical phenomena that could make this dream a reality.

Coupled Resonators

To achieve wireless power transfer in a way that is both practical and safe, one needs to use a physical phenomenon that enables the power source and the device (in this case, the mobile phone) to exchange energy strongly, while interacting only weakly with living beings and other environmental objects, like furniture and walls. The phenomenon of coupled resonators precisely fits this description. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects.

A child on a swing is a good example of a resonant system. A swing exhibits a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy into the motion of the swing. Another example involves acoustic resonances: imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, but each filled with wine up to a different level, so that each resonates at a different frequency (that is, they each emit a different tone or note when tapped, by a utensil, for example). If an opera singer enters that room and sings a very loud single note, the glass having the corresponding resonant frequency can accumulate enough energy to shatter, while the other glasses are unaffected.

Strong Coupling

Coupled resonators are said to operate in a strongly coupled regime if their energy transfer rate is substantially higher than the rate at which they lose energy due to factors such as material absorption and radiation. In the strongly coupled regime, energy transfer can be very efficient. These considerations are universal, applying to all kinds of resonances (e.g., acoustic, mechanical, electromagnetic, etc.). Soljačić and his colleagues at MIT (Karalis and Joannopoulos) set out to explore and develop the physical theory of how to enable strongly coupled resonators to transfer power over distances to enable the kind of wireless device charging that Soljačić first imagined. Their theoretical results were published first in 2006, and again in 2008 in the Annals of Physics.

Once the physical theories were developed, Soljačić and his team (Andre Kurs, Ph.D., Aristeidis Kraals, ScD, Robert Moffatt, John D. Joannopoulos, Ph.D., Peter Fisher, Ph.D.) set out to validate them experimentally. The theory was developed to cover a broad range of coupled resonator systems, but the experimental work focused on proving that magnetically coupled resonators could exchange energy in the manner predicted by the theory and required for the wireless charging of devices, such as mobile phones. The team explored a system of two electro-magnetic resonators coupled through their magnetic fields. They were able to identify the strongly coupled regime in this system, and showed that strong coupling could be achieved over distances that greatly exceeded the size of the resonant objects themselves. The team had proven that in this strongly coupled regime, efficient wireless power transfer could be enabled. Their successful experiment was published in the journal, Science, in 2007.

WiTricity Technology is Born

The experimental design consisted of two copper coils, each a self-resonant system. One of the coils, connected to an AC power supply, was the resonant source. The other coil, the resonant capture device, was connected to a 60 watt light bulb. The power source and capture device were suspended in mid-air with nylon thread, at distances that ranged from a few centimeters to over 2.5 meters (8.2 ft). Not only was the light bulb illuminated, but the theoretical predictions of high efficiency over distance were proven experimentally. By placing various objects between the source and capture device, the team demonstrated how the magnetic near field can transfer power through certain materials and around metallic obstacles.

Thus, Prof. Soljačić’s dream of finding a method to wirelessly connect mobile electric devices to the existing electric grid was realized. WiTricity Corporation was launched in 2007 to carry this technology forward from the MIT laboratories to commercial production.

Invention Team

The team of MIT scientists that built the experiment to demonstrate non-radiative wireless energy transfer. Note that they are positioned between the experimental power source coil and the power capture coil —as 60 watts of power are being safely transferred a distance of over seven feet to illuminate the light bulb. (first row, from left: Peter Fisher, Robert Moffatt; center: Marin Soljačić; back row, from left: Andre Kurs, John Joannopoulos, Aristeidis Karalis)